Goodness me!

Goodness me. The Wheeliebin is taking wickets at Edgbaston.

How to waste an afternoon

Some time ago I saw my doctor about a case of ear pain which turned out to be just wax build up. He said that if it recurred I should just drop in and see the nurse at the clinic. As the problem has recurred I did just that this afternoon. I was not entirely surprised that the nurse would not do anything without a doctor's order as. in my experience with the Ontario Health Care "System" the right hand rarely knows what the left hand is doing. I was surprised that in the circumstances I was still waiting two hours later. By that time i was pretty livid as we are talking about a process that takes two minutes.

Now I've worked in and around healthcare in this province long enough to know that it is run for the exclusive benefit of physicians and administrators and this was a prime example so I politely asked the receptionist to convey to nurse and doctor that I was not pleased as was of the opinion that two rabid chipmunks could run the place more efficiently. Then i left as I actually did have other things I needed to do.

People talk about how great the Canadian health care "system" is. It does provide good care but at an administrative level it is an absolutely sick joke.

100 things I like

I thought the 100 things I like meme via itchyfidget might help with the down-in-the-dumps feeling.

Make a list of 100 things you like in no particular order. Avoid the obvious (significant other, cake...) and be completely honest with yourself. If you try to think of things that you are curious about and inspired by, you'll end up discovering a lot about yourself and in doing so developing a sort of bank of your interests and ideas.

( my attempt at 100 )

I've been trying for two days and I can't get past 40. So much for helping with feeling depressed.

Let us now praise famous men

It is not normally in my nature to be unduly kind to those unfortunates who hail from the wrong side of the Pennines but sometimes exceptions are warranted.

In delightful conversation with the lovely blonde222 today i was driven to look up the highest score reached by a team batting fourth in a test match. It was England's 645-5 in the "timeless test" at Durban in 1939. Earlier in the day I had heard Geoffrey Boycott talking about having been at a ceremony to commemorate surely the greatest of England slow left armers, Hedley Verity, who would have been a hundred this year. I vividly recall Neville Cardus' description of him spinning the ball so hard it ripped a little piece out of the turf. It occurred to me that Durban must have been Verity's last test for war broke out before another was played; a war Verity did not survive. He was killed commanding an infantry company in the Italian campaign.

This makes me feel very uncomfortable

I haven't fully thought this through but this story makes me very uncomfortable. If it is a criminal offence for a person not to shop his/her spouse (or presumably, a child his/her parents), how far away are we from the Stalin's Russia or Orwell's 1984. Does the individual's relationship to the state over-ride all other human ties?

ETA: Could this law be used against a priest who did not disclose what he learned in the Confessional? If not, why not?

The lemur was right

It is much easier to get a pill into Padmini if one sits on her.